If you won't talk about yourself, at least compliment the audience. Just keep turning it back around, all right. Gush.

My voice, at first rough and breaking on the high notes, warms up into something splendid. A voice that would make the mockingjays fall silent and then tumble over themselves to join in.

I carefully lay out the provisions. One thin black sleeping bag that reflects body heat. A pack of crackers. A pack of dried beef strips. A bottle of iodine. A box of wooden matches. A small coil of wire. A pair of sunglasses. And a half-gallon plastic bottle with a cap for carrying water that's bone dry. No water. How hard would it have been for them to fill up the bottle?

What do you think?" I whisper to Peeta. "About the fire?" "I'll rip off your cape if you'll rip off mine," he says through gritted teeth.

I know what blood poisoning is, Katniss," says Peeta. "Even if my mother isn't a healer." I'm jolted back in time, to another wound, another set of bandages. "You said that same thing to me in the first Hunger Games. Real or not real?" "Real," he says. "And you risked your life getting the medicine that saved me?" "Real." I shrug. "You were the reason I was alive to do it.

What happens when we get back? I don't know. I guess we try and forget. I don't want to forget.

You're still trying to protect me. Real or not real," he whispers. "Real," I answer. "Because that's what you and I do, protect each other.